Washburn Information Technology Services is completing the installation of new wireless equipment in Residential Living facilities to better meet the needs and expectations our students living on campus. We expect this will provide substantially better service than our old system as we see more students, more equipment, and a wider variety of devices communicate on our campus wireless network.

The new wireless system replaces an older system that was designed around centralized, high-power equipment. The new equipment is smaller, faster, and operates at lower power levels to reduce interference and work better with newer mobile devices.

We are installing many more access points (113 APs with the new system vs. 24 with with the old) and are placing them closer to the where the students live – in every suite in Kuehne, West, and Washburn Village and in student living spaces in the LLC. This allows us to improve placement of equipment to ensure good service and will substantially increase the total number of client devices we can support.

The new system is designed to optimize the sharing of available bandwidth while providing a high level of overall throughput in order to support, among other things the high definition internet video and other anticipated bandwidth-intensive technologies in the future.

We are very excited about the improvements this will bring and look forward to expanded use of this system as demand grows elsewhere on campus as well.

Additionally, we won’t be abandoning the older equipment we are removing from Residential Living. We will instead be reallocating it to areas where the design of that equipment can provide service more optimally. All of the equipment we remove from Residential Living will go to providing service for the direct benefit of our students elsewhere on campus.